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“Easy for you to say. You’re young. You probably don’t have much to rebel against.”
She cocks her head. “You’d be surprised.”
And that’s how I ended up in a hotel room, passed out, naked, tangled in sheets, next to a woman I didn’t know.
Chapter Ten
I wake up after a fever dream, with cotton mouth and a sore back, the woman beside me fast asleep.
My eyes scan the room. What I wouldn’t give for some cold water, a few aspirin and a time machine. I’ve made mistakes in my life, but not one like this, not in a long time.
Eve and I have been married for thirty-three years. Not to excuse my infidelity, but unless you’ve been married for that long, you don’t get to have a say. You can’t possibly know what an eternity it is.
For thirty of those years, I have been faithful to her.
Thirty good years. Do a couple of shaky ones negate all the good? Many people would say yes, but I don’t know. I’m sure they’d be no less shaky with anyone else. That is the nature of relationships, and if I know anything at all, which isn’t much, I know you can’t fight nature. It always finds a way to win.
It’s not like Eve’s record is squeaky clean. But, like I said, thirty-three years is a long time. Days and days, hours upon hours, in which to make a mistake.
And believe me, this is a mistake. Not only am I going to have to answer to my wife for the missing hours, I’m going to have to answer to Liam, and the last thing I intend to do is to look weak in his eyes.
Bile rises in my throat. Maybe it’s the pounding in my head, maybe it’s the hangover, maybe it’s recalling what Liam said in the car last night and how betrayed I feel by my wife. To find out that she has been talking to him about our children, when for years she has refused me the opportunity, stings.
If I were an armchair psychologist, this would be the part where I point out I’ve just completed a revenge fuck.
I know that Eve blames me for what happened to the boys. For years, I have known that. But to refuse me memories, pictures around the house, all of the birthdays and Christmases that I wasn’t allowed to so much as mention them—well, that has been almost as bad as losing them in the first place. She made it feel like they didn’t just die—they vanished, as though they’d never existed in the first place.
She blames me for them, I blame her for Jenny. I know it was hard for her, losing her brothers, and with them, in a sense, her parents as she knew them.
Most marriages don’t survive the death of a child. Ours has survived three. Losing the boys sucked the joy from our lives. So much that we had none left, nothing to give our daughter. It makes sense that she rebelled. Or maybe it was in her genes all along. She wasn’t my daughter. That never stopped me from loving her like she was, even when it was hard to show it. Even after the boys. Not only did I overlook Eve’s mistake, I embraced it. Did I ever get credit for that? No.
I never so much as asked for it, either.
Then, when Jenny died, it took the rest of me. Not all at once, but in small chunks over the years. It was like the shedding of skin, peeling off layers of who you thought you were in the world.
I dealt with it by throwing myself into work, writing more than I ever had. Becoming more successful than I ever had. Certainly more than I’d ever dreamed. No one can tell you how much free time you have when you suddenly become childless and your wife hates you, but I can assure you, it’s a lot.
I excuse myself from the hotel room, make my way down to the lobby, and end up in the hotel bar. It’s not open yet, but thankfully the restaurant next door comes in clutch. I’ve always found the best way to deal with regret is to start over again, fresh.
The place is mostly deserted, which I find suitable. My tie is stuffed into my left pocket. It’s pretty clear that I’m wearing a day-old wrinkled tux and that I haven’t showered. I’m sure I look about like I feel. Experience tells me no one really cares.
A server appears to take my order. She has a large hoop through her left eyebrow and a barbell in her nose. I wonder if it hurt. I wonder if that was the point. I wonder what the next phase will be.
I order a whiskey on the rocks. Proving my point, she doesn’t bat an eye at my choice. Who cares if it’s not yet nine a.m.? “What I wouldn’t give to have one of those,” she says.
“Might as well,” I tell her.
“I have an AA meeting tonight.”
“Even better. Aren’t those like confession, anyway?”
Her bottom lip juts out and then she nods. “Good point.”
Our conversation settles my nerves. It’s always been people with a kind of laissez-faire attitude who interest me most. It’s as though the whole world could be falling apart and so what?
A group of businessmen eat at a corner table, laughter erupting every few minutes.
Outside, traffic grows thicker with each passing moment. Brake lights span as far as the eye can see. Horns sound cacophonously.
